Providing a much-needed check on mythopoeic archaeological inference, but also on occasion commenting on the important discoveries of the day. Every effort is made to keep the invective to a dull roar. Best plug your ears!

Saturday, 25 August 2012

That Wild and Crazy Casey Luskin Uncorks Another Beauty: Makes Monkeys Out of Professional Palaeoanthropologists

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [1 John 1:1]

I'm beginning to get a sense of the problem. When approaching the voluminous literature of human evolution Young Earthers and Creationists/IDers [i.e. Intelligent Design adherents] can't get past the habit of believing that [at least some of] what they read as being the revealed word of a deity. As such my colleagues could afford to be a bit more careful when choosing their words. I can easily see why their best efforts feed into the Christian creation myth. Notwithstanding his propensity to treat the writings of us as the word of a deity revealed [much like my colleagues come to think of it], Luskin is either very lucky and came up with the foundation for his argument by chance or the man has done his homework and read widely in 'our' literature. Such is his virtuosity. Shortly before leaving for the Czech Republic in July I felt preternaturally compelled to write about the efforts of Casey Luskin, a lawyer and IDer. At that time he was promising a whole series of tell-all revelations that he reckoned would dissolve the humanist edifice that is our present knowledge of the fossil record. As I now discover, in the interim I've missed many more articles by the prolific Mr. Luskin. No worries! The SA news ticker came to the rescue the other day when up popped this:

Luskin's major point is a variation of the theme of the earlier article. Australopithecus is an ape; Homo is a human. Read on to find out how he makes monkeys out of my colleagues. I could give Luskin's whole spiel a pass were it not for the way in which he artfully weaves the words of our colleagues into a narrative that underscores his conclusion--that the appearance of Homo in the fossil record isn't prefigured by the earlier australopithecines, and is thus strong evidence of the special creation of humanity. Of course, to do so he must paint all members of the genus Homo in such a light that 'we' all appear to be like modern humans. And that's where where my colleagues come in--aiding and abetting Luskin and his ilk with authoritative statements such as the ones included in the medley of the following Luskin quotes [complete with a very scholarly looking list of references cited].

'Donald Johanson suggests that were erectus alive today, it could mate successfully with modern humans to produce fertile offspring.' [from Lucy]

'Wood and Collard [reinforce the similarities among members of our genus when they write]: "The numerous associated skeletons of H. neanderthalensis indicate that their body shape was within the range of variation seen in modern humans." ' [That wouldn't be you, Mark, would it?] [published in Science]

'Erik Trinkaus likewise argues: "They may have had heavier brows or broader noses or stockier builds, but behaviorally, socially and reproductively they were all just people." ' [From an interview in Time]

'Trinkaus and others say there is no reason to believe they were any less intelligent than the newly arrived 'modern humans.' ' [Washington Post interview]

'Fred H. Smith [adds in a Smithsonian interview] "[The first European palaeoanthropologists] believed [Neanderthals] to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought." Now, ... researchers believe that Neanderthals "were highly intelligent, able to adapt to a wide variety of ecological zones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so. They were quite accomplished." '

'Francesco d'Errico affirms these comments [in the same Smithsonian article], stating, "Neanderthals were using technology as advanced as that of contemporary anatomically modern humans and were using symbolism in much the same way." '

My dear old friends from the Kebara Cave project add fuel to this fire: ' "the morphological basis for human speech capability appears to have been fully developed" in Neanderthals.'

'Neanderthals made musical instruments like the flute.' [citing the debunking article in Current Anthropology, as it happens]

[At least Luskin owns up to the preceding two inferences being somewhat 'uncertain'--would that my colleagues were so circumspect.]

'Trinkaus says that when comparing ancient Europeans and Neanderthals: "Both groups would seem to us dirty and smelly but, cleaned up, we would understand both to be human. There's good reason to think that they did as well." ' [Another humdinger from the Washington Post article cited above]

Plunging the knife in even a tad further, Luskin then cites the recent DNA 'evidence' that Neanderthals R Us and vice versa. I don't have to tell you what I and a few others think of those tasty inferences. The author finishes the medley of incriminating statements with: 'We saw earlier that Leslie Aiello said "Australopithecines are like apes, and the Homo group are like humans." ' [Shame on you Leslie Aiello. You of all people should know that you can't split the ape family/superfamily into us and them.]I ask you. How can we expect to gain credibility with the supernaturalists when we so readily feed their doctrinal belief that humans aren't apes? At every chance we should be reminding them that humans are nothing if not apes. That oughta get 'em thinking. So, let's all get on the same page and stop these people from making monkeys of us all!

Thanks for dropping by! If you like what you see, follow me on Twitter, or friend me on Facebook. You can also subscribe to receive new posts by email or RSS [scroll to the top and look on the left]. I get a small commission for anything you purchase from Amazon.com if you go there using any link on this site. There's a donate button, too. Your generous gift will always be used to augment the site and its contents.

NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chiefWoe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.

About the author

My primary research interest is and always has been advancing knowledge of how hominids became human. Modern humans exploded out of Africa between about 40 and 50 kyr ago, and there is abundant evidence of recognizably human behaviour from at least that time in Africa, and across Europe, Asia and Australia. Signature modern human behaviour has not been documented unequivocally for the Neanderthals and their contemporaries, the skeletally modern members of the genus Homo (e.g. at Skhul Cave). Instead of recognizably modern implements and other hallmarks of modern human behaviour, in the Middle Palaeolithic we see lithic technology organized around flakes, obtained through bifacial reduction, some platform preparation, and retouch; no unequivocal use of bone other than as an analogue for stone; no evidence of space use that could be recognized as human; no unequivocal evidence of purposeful burial, no unequivocal representational imagery. Achievements include a BA in Archaeology (Simon Fraser University, 1987), “Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial” (Current Anthropology, 1989), a Ph.D. in Anthropology (University of California at Berkeley, 1994), a lectureship in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, from 1996 to 1999, “Middle Palaeolithic Burial is Not a Dead Issue: The View from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh” (Journal of Human Evolution, 1999), and, in aggregate, 27 months of field experience in southern central British Columbia (Salishan), Israel (Middle Palaeolithic), France (Mesolithic), Australia, California’s Coast Range, its Central Valley and Great Basin desert regions.

The Subversive Archaeologist, Blogging Since October 5, 2011. Powered by Blogger.